I absolutely LOVED the art in this game!! It was also really fun to play!
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Dreamer's Dilemma's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #27 | 4.279 | 4.279 |
| Visuals | #38 | 4.459 | 4.459 |
| Overall | #41 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Enjoyment | #93 | 3.802 | 3.802 |
| Theme | #193 | 3.757 | 3.757 |
Ranked from 111 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Really cool entry! The art style and combat animations give it a lot of personality, and the gameplay already feels satisfying for something made in such a short time. The music and hits add that nice “punch” feeling that keeps it engaging. Could totally see this turning into a full arcade-style brawler with more polish. Had a great time smashing through it — love the energy of this one haha!
If you have a moment, I’d love if you could check out mine too! Play it here: https://kaijota.itch.io/graverun
Watch the gameplay on YouTube:
Submitted
GraverunA really sweet, unique and fun game, with impressive visuals and music. You can clearly see that the devs put their heart into this. The intro “cinematic” is also really fun. I enjoyed the beat-em-up system, and it was great how you could chose different powerups to make a strategy. The respawning mechanic also helped, as the game is quite brutally hard XD Thos crows killed me a hundred times. One thing that was a bit lost on me was how helping the different people manifested itself as beating up monsters. Perhaps these were their inner demons?
Submitted
Immortal ServitudeYou got the lore pretty spot on! I would've liked to spend more time fleshing out the story (and balancing the damn crows), so I'm really happy that you were still able to pick up on the vibe!
The cinematics are my first attempt to animate my blockbench models in blender, and was my attempt to transition between some story screens and gameplay
of course most of the artwork was made by Frozencrunch, who learnt a lot about 2D animation for this project
Thank you so much for checking out our project!
P.S. I'd like you to know struggling with the crows is a completely natural response to the 2nd level they are EVIL
Perspective from a game-tester and user-experience designer.
Also, I'm super sleepy and not going as in-depth as I did in other reviews here.
This game has a lot of visual flair and it's really impressive to see a cutscene in a game jam game. However, for some reason, the game wouldn't display on stream properly until after I got to the main gameplay loop of the side-scrolling beat-em up. However, it worked afterwards, and I don't know why. Optimization issues seemed to be present in the 3D games I played tonight, so maybe it's my 3090's lack of v-ram. Game seemed to slow down on the 3rd level with the parallax scrolling as well.
There's a lot of stuff that wasn't readily intuitive the first time I saw it, like the post it note health bar, which was also distracting from the combat because the text was randomized. However, I think that the surreal/absurd aesthetics were the strongest part of the game and I appreciated the overall positivity expressed by the eyeball main character, Sam.
I don't think I was ever told I could block, but I just kinda figured it out. Blocking seemed to be over-powered, things would bounce off me and be easily hit afterwards. However, if I did get hit it seemed really easy to get put in a situation where there was nothing I could do to avoid getting hit again due to a lack of invincibility frames. I also found it weird that if I tried punching in the air, my forward moment would just stop and I'd fall to the ground. The mechanic where you pick an ability after each level reminds me of Hades, which makes me think this could be a good setting for a rogue-lite or rogue-like in the future if the power-ups and levels were a bit randomized. I don't think the additions of the ghosts each time you die made this a compelling exploration of the theme "Death is an opportunity" though.
The visuals are just STUNNING. The prettiest game on a jam so far. Ablosutely love it. Alse group beating was very fun. Awesome work, 5/5
Submitted
The Curse of FlobsReally cool game, the visuals look great the use of self-affirmations on post it notes for heath was a nice thematic touch! I liked the music too, and choice to attack by punching or go for a jumping kick at the cost of being immobile for a while but stunning the enemies for longer made the moment-by-moment action of the combat really fun! Death giving you more copies of yourself to help was a nice touch! Worked great with the theme of the jam and acted as a nice accessability measure to make it easier for those who struggled! Speaking of which I struggled to beat the crows on the 2nd commenter's stage, maybe them having less health or adding invulnerability for a small time after you get hit would help make them easier to beat? Really polished for the amount of time available!
Submitted
Free SpiritThanks for checking us out! our general take on the theme was that failure is an opportunity to improve, and I'm glad you picked up on those themes!
Yeah and looking back the complaint about the crows is totally valid, in the future if i were to make a similar enemy I'd make the dive more telegraphed and faster on the rise so they wouldn't hit twice
IM IN LOVE WITH THIS GAME, the visuals really caught my eye and the story is a lovely way to go with the theme and also creative, and the character design is just lovely AND SAAMMMM, overall an enjoying game in all acpects AMAZINNNGGGG
Submitted
MalpracticianI LOVE the art so much! The attacks? Effects? Everything! It's so fun! Amazing work!
Submitted
ULU: WithinI admit I struggled a lot with the mechanics but that's maybe just me being bad at fighting games ahah. Congratulations on this amazing submission though! The art is phenomenal and so unique even though it's not my type, it's great! I really enjoyed the game a lot, it was challenging but a good type of challenging and not frustrating. I found myself learning things during gameplay and getting used to mechanics which triggered some "Aaaah I get it" moments that I really enjoy. However, this can also be due to some lack of required explanation sometimes. For example the health is supposed to be the post-its on the corner (which is reaaaaly creative) buuuut it should be clearer (I only noticed that was my health in the middle of my playthrough ahah).
Anyways, really fun game, the fighting mechanics are enjoyable even though they could use a little bit more work: attacking could have combos like attacking multiple times or combining attacks (this is a 4 day gamejam so it's just a suggestion for later). The blocking is satisfying, however, it's only satisfying when you get the explosion upgrade. The normal block lacks some kind of feedback that would make it more enjoyable in my opinion (maybe a camera shake or slowmotion effect or an SFX).
Overall I had fun, even though this is not quite my type of game, you managed to get me in the flow which is really great! Congratulations once again for the awesome submission!
I would appreciate if you could rate my game as well and leave some feedback! Hope you enjoy it!
Submitted
Spirit SunderThanks so much! Yeah, if we could go back and change one thing about the game, we'd totally add more instruction queue's! I tried to fight for them to be added, but ultimately, it seems they weren't implemented. As for the screen shake, I really appreciate the work done by ViralConfection to add that sort of feedback, but I unfortunately couldn't play test it too much myself due to my epilepsy. It's great to hear feedback on what needs changing, though, since I really struggle to actually play most games!
We're glad you loved the exploding block feature, and thanks for leaving such a detailed review! We'll make sure to play your game soon, so keep an eye out for our review and comment! Keep on keeping on, dreamer!
Really loved the visuals and the overall concept. Got stuck on the battle mechanics though with the crows, since I couldn't figure out how to block (admittedly, fighter games arn't my usual genre so maybe I was missing some insider knowledge of typical keyboard commands). I did like the little touch of the sticky notes being your health bar!
Submitted
Skele-TON RunThanks so much! Yeah, if we could go back and change anything, we'd definitely add a controls screen. People are getting confused because we added multiple options, so you can play with WASD, the arrow keys, or your mouse! A visual explaining that would've been nice, but here we are. If you ever decide to come back, here's a breakdown of it for you:
1. WASD to move, space to jump, P to punch, O to block, and SHIFT for special moves you've picked up, such as the air dash!
2. Arrow keys to move, up arrow to jump, Z to punch, X to block, and Q to use your special move
3. Additionally, you can also use mouse right and left click to punch and block with your choice of movement keys!
Thanks for playing our game, and keep an eye out for us to play and rate yours! Keep going, dreamer!
Loved it! The visuals were simultaneously really cool and a little overwhelming for me. Was there a health bar? I never knew when I was going to die. Great work!
Submitted
Derelict MemoriesI love the art and music! Also adore lil Sams design, he's so cute!
Submitted
Dying for a RaiseI really LOVE this game! The visuals are unique for each person and akin to ENA! The gameplay is hard but not too hard that I got frustrated, it was amazing! And the enemies designs were just so cool, especially the last one with the mirror and hands, there is a TON of symbolism here and the message is an important message indeed in these times! <3 <3
Submitted
Leap of Faith [Jamsepticeye 2025]Thank you so much, we're so glad you were able to pick up on the themes and symbolism! And omg, that ENA comment is so sweet, we absolutely love ENA!!! We loved designing every aspect of this game, and we're so glad you made it to the last level and found your favorite creature!
We're so excited to try your game, so keep an eye out for us to play and review your game soon! Keep going, dreamer! <3
I am obsessed with the art. and I LOVE the confetti/coloured paper. The whole game is super unique, including the story with the sweet underlying messages, and the visuals... gosh the visuals!
I genuinely went to check out your profile, because I just want more of you guys' style. WELL DONE! ❤️❤️
P.S. I hope you guys make a web version too, so that more people will check it out!
Submitted
Until ThenFor sure, we really wish we had a web version! And thanks so much for commenting on the art and your favorite part! We were so worried the message wouldn't get across since we ran out of time, but so many people are still picking up on it, so that's refreshing! Unfortunately, this was my first game ever, so I don't have any more content for you, but we might in the future!
We're so excited to try your game, and we're streaming each one we play! While we're done streaming for the night, you can let us know if you'd like for us to message you on discord the next time we're streaming and feature your game! We review and comment on each game afterward, and we'd love to have you. Keep going, dreamer! <3
I refuse to believe that this is the first game you made, wow! Well done for a first game in such a big gamejam. You guys deserve all the ratings, and I do hope to see more in the future. ❣️
And how lovely of you to try out some games on stream! Of course we would love to see you play our game, and hear your thoughts. My discord tag is xmorrow, so please feel free to send a message when you go live next!
Great game! We are glad to say we made it to the end! Awesome twist on an old school beat 'em up to fit the theme and great enemy design. We especially loved the artstyle and animations, super cool and very unique! Honestly that last level was a huge struggle but the satisfaction from finally beating it was so worth it. Great game would highly recommend! Cool little puppets of VC and FC at the end as well.
Again awesome work guys.
Submitted
Forget Me NotThanks so much for playing -- and watching us play your game on stream! Your comments on the art were super sweet, and we loved all the interaction with you guys! It's super cool that you were able to implement the ghost feature that makes them mimic your previous actions, that must have been a feat! Great work, dreamers <3
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